The Goings-On

I will give you details on a few of the happenings over the past week or so...

The Green Paint Incident
On this particular day I decided to have the kids make an animal family out of their fingerprints. Our theme right now is family and I figured we could work on the immediate family words- mother father brother sister... as well as some animals, a two.for.one. I have an assistant in my class that I share with one other teacher so I asked her to man the paint table while I did a puppet/book activity with the other half of the class. So all goes well... UNTIL... in the middle of me reading to the second group, a girl comes up to me from the other group to tell me some kid is hitting... "where is Michelle" I ask. I look over (I was sitting on the carpet reading with my group) and she is no where to be found. So I ask this girl to find her for me. She comes back with the response from Michelle "I'll come when I am done" ...OK.. So in the mean time I am telling my reading group something else to do so I can bring some semblence of order back to the class and suddenly: CRASH. An entire jar of green paint spills everywhere. Half of the jar is now pooled on the floor, a little yellow chair, the table, Fernando's leg, and somehow Emilio's behind ( I think he sat in it on purpose). Thank you, Michelle. Now I start walking the boys toward the bathroom and I stop by the room she is in on the way to ask her ever so politely if she could come help me in my now dire circumstances. She managed to take some time away to help me clean up the paint, thankfully it is very washable especially now that it was on my pants as well. I dont mean to sound as angry as it probably does, but this is unfortunately not the first time she has done something like this. How can you think it is ok to leave 9 kindergarteners at a table with 4 open paint containers and think nothing will happen? if she had to leave to go to the other teacher and she knew this why couldn't she tell me? many questions that I feel are logical, cannot be answered...

Monsters in the Closet
My class goes out for 4 regular specials a week: PE, Religion, Music, and Computer. One day, we were coming back from somewhere else and I asked the class to walk directly to Religion which is just across the courtyard/playground area from my room. During specials, I have my free time, preps if you will, though they are only 25 mins long and I usually have a ton of things on my list to do. So this particular day I went into my room to write a note to the parents. 2-3 minutes later I hear my storage closet door creak open. "Andres! how long have you been in there?! You are supposed to be in religion!" He is always the one who thinks 'if I cant see you, you cant see me' which we all know is definitely not true. He will hide under the table, though his face is hidden, the rest of his body sure isn't; he will hide behind the shelves of toys, once again, your body is still visible; one time, he even tried to hide behind the tether ball poles by my room... ok, you may be little but you ain't that little! So though this is a recurring event, I have to laugh because he was playing hide and seek but no one was playing with him! It had to have been almost 5 minutes in there, and the light wasn't on! It does however, become un-funny the second time when light is provided and mischeif is had. This time was very similar, we arrive back in class from a special and a few of the boys had run ahead breaking the rule of course, so when I get in the room I scold them a little, warn that next time recess time will be taken and move on. I ask one table where Andres is, one girl tells me he was talking to Ms Charo. Ok, this is a normal occurance, if you are too excessive in your trouble-making, you go talk to Miss Charo, and unfortunately he has talked to her many times. so I think nothing more about. We are all working on our Alphabet Journals when I hear a thud on the closet door - immediately I know Andres is at it again, another good 5 minutes have passed with him hidden in the closet. I open the door and all I see are wrappers everywhere and toys strewn about. Andres is hiding behind the door, for fear of punishment I'm sure, but it is a small closet and he had no where to go. The wrappers were from the clay/playdoh they use here, it comes in bars and the school has cut them in half to make enough for each student (it never dries out which is cool). The 6-7 chunks he has opened now form one large ball, a few colors salvageable but the middle is quite well mixed. The toys that I put into the closet are the ones they cannot handle at toy time, either too much fighting over or too messy etc. So he had his heyday in there and then I made him clean it all up. I think he learned his lesson because that was over a week ago now and hasn't happened again...

Office Party
For some reason, most videos from network tv websites cannot work in Mexico. This means we cannot benefit from the day after postings of last nights episodes of whatever tv show we may want to watch. Sad news for lovers of The Office! Especially since when we first arrived, NBC was not available on iTunes, so we couldn't even buy it. Thankfully this changed and we were able to buy the last few episodes of last season to catch up before the premeire. When premeire night came along, iTunes didn't look hopeful for providing us with the new episode, so ironically NBC pushed us to find less legit means to watch. Some people put them online for free, so we did get to see it! We should have gotten a picture because Emily, Malita, and I were all huddled around my computer watching intently, laughing hysterically, and loving every minute of it.

Nerd Alert
One day, a fellow teacher came by to visit and upon discovering that she had access to a grading program that we could all download to our computers as well, we hustled right over to her house and fixed ourselves up! Now, being in kindergarten, I don't have to worry about grades quite the same as the elementary and middle school teachers - I give out Es Ss Is and Ns (excellent, satisfactory, improving, and needs improvement). But I put it on my computer all the same, never know when that might come in handy. The other teachers can actually make use of the program right now. Their grades are due and this way they save much time on figuring out averages and totaling up numbers etc. Jenna had made herself a neat little excel gradebook, but even that comes in second to this. So we had a nerd party that actually alleviated many peoples minds and helped bring in some relaxation to the weekend. A break was taked to go to a local seafood restaurant Costeñitos, at which I actually didn't eat any seafood:) but the empanadas and cranberry-lemonade are good! Then it was back to work..while watching a movie! I helped both Jenna and Charlie correct some of their things too, it just doesn't feel right to watch them suffer while I have little to do!

Charreada
This is a type of rodeo we attended on Sunday with Malita and her grandma and aunt in the neighboring town, Gomez. The arena was smaller than I expected, but I guess it is considered an amateur thing, but it was fun that there was a large mariachi band accompanying the events! First the horses show off their skills, they 'brake' if you will really fast (skid to a stop, it looks like it could be painful), walk to the side, back, spin in a circle, etc. Another event was a little like cow tipping - the charro rides next to a bull and grabs his tail, wrapping it around his leg in hopes to make the bull fall over. They also tried to rope the back feet of a passing bull. There were women riders as well who seem to be mostly show but they had one event which I just looked up and it is actually called a Skirmish. There are something like 8-10 women riding sidesaddle in elaborate dresses and they do a synchronized 'dance' almost where they look like they will collide with eachother but end up weaving between the others. There was more to come but after these events we were getting ready to go back, hungry and still had school work to do, so we skipped out early. Unfortunately, I think there was still bullriding to come which would have been interesting to watch, along with the jumping from one horse to another wild horse which also sounds deadly. In the beginning there was a 'gasp' moment from the crowd when a bull tried to jump the fence and get out of the arena. he landed with one hoof and his neck draped on the second wall and two legs between the wall and the first fence with the last leg still in the arena - uncomfortable to say the least. He eventually fell between the two walls and was lead to the door that brought him back to his undesired fate. I have put up a few pics of this event, and even a movie or two so if you want to check that out here is the link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/millerbreanna/Charreada

The New Arrival
Thanks for sending the package, Mom! A wonderful treat. I had forgotten all my dvds at home (if you know me, that is a critical mistake), so I received a large number of my collection in a cd case, along with a few surprise purchases! Our movie collection is now doubled, need a movie, come rent from us! ;) Other fun things thrown in too, thanks again mom, I appreciate it! Anyone else who wants to send a little hello is more than welcome ;)